


Our relationship | Ear Biscuits Ep. ___

by heatgeneratingtechniques



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Friends to Lovers, How Do I Tag, M/M, Relationship Discussions, Transcribed, What-If, ear biscuits, implied polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-12 14:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11738658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heatgeneratingtechniques/pseuds/heatgeneratingtechniques
Summary: On a very special episode of EB, RandL describe their transition from friends to lovers.





	Our relationship | Ear Biscuits Ep. ___

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this fic came to me after listening to [EB 106](https://soundcloud.com/earbiscuits/adventures-in-six-flags-new). Their dynamic was so good that it got me thinking, "What if...?"

**R:** Mythical beasts, as I’m sure many of you know by now from our Facebook post, Link and I have decided to go public with our... What are we calling this again?

 **L:** Relationship. How ‘bout let’s start there.

 **R:** Yeah, okay. Relationship. Link and I are more than just friends, and we’ve always been that way, but it’s only recently that we’ve decided to... to take it even further.

 **L:** And it’s been _great._

 **R:** Has it? I feel like we still argue as much as we did before.

 **L:** Yeah, but there’s not that—that _tension_ that used to be there.

 **R:** Tension?

 **L:** Yeah, that...

 **R:** Sexual tension

 **L:** N-no! (laughs) No, man! I mean, uh, well yeah, maybe that’s what it was.

 **R:** I _know_ that’s what it was.

 **L:** Whatever. Stop acting so smug.

 **R:** (chuckles)

 **L:** Anyway, we decided to talk about this on Ear Biscuits, because, y’know, this is where we can be honest with you all. This is something we’ve worked through with our families and close friends, and we decided to now share it with you.

 **R:** In case there’s anyone out there in a similar predicament.

 **L:** Psh, I highly doubt that.

 **R:** You never know, Link. Chances are that there are, let’s say, four people right now who are in love with both their spouse and their best friend and don’t know what to do about it.

 **L:** Fine, Rhett. Four people. This episode is just for y’all. You’re _welcome_. Anyway, this is something we’ve wanted to share with you guys for a while, actually, but the time just hasn’t been right. We’ve had Buddy System, the tour, the book, the holidays, GMM, and on top of everything else we’ve been checking in with our families, making sure that they’re okay with everything.

 **R:** Right. Because if they weren’t okay with it, we’d stop this.

 **L:** (clears throat) Um, well yeah. But we’ll get to that in a little bit. I have a list of questions I want us to talk about, just to walk everyone through our relationship and the ways in which it’s changed since first grade.

 **R:** Okay. I’m ready.

(paper rustles)

 **L:** When did you decide you were in love with me?

 **R:** Oh, we’re going straight for the hard-hitters, are we?

 **L:** I warned ya before we started recording, man.

 **R:** Okay, well that’s easy. When we did the blood oath. When we both cut out palms and decided to do something big together. I went home that night and, listen, I didn’t understand what I was feeling. I was just a thirteen year old kid. Nobody at that age knows what they’re feeling, they just feel a lot of it. But I went home and I remember lying in bed that night and thinking to myself, “Y’know, I really love him.”

 **L:** (laughs) So weird to hear you say that!

 **R:** Why’s it gotta be weird? You had already been my best friend for several years by that point.

 **L:** But what kind of guy who’s always chasing girls thinks to himself that he’s in love with his best friend?

 **R:** That’s a rhetorical question.

 **L:** It is. I’m asking it just to hammer a point home.

 **R:** A point about what?

 **L:** About how freakin’ silly that was!

 **R:** (snorts) Well, you ain’t callin’ it silly now, man.

 **L:** I—

 **R:** Well lemme ask you this, Link. When did _you_ decide you were in love with me?

 **L:** Oh gosh. I gotta think about this for a minute.

 **R:** What? You were the one who put the questions together and you’re not even prepared to answer them yourself?

 **L:** Lemme think! Okay, I got it.

 **R:** This better be good.

 **L:** Senior year. Of high school. That was a rough time, y’know, that transition phase from either school to the workforce or from school to college. I’ve told you this before, but you don’t know just how _worried_ I was that we wouldn’t be able to go to the same school.

 **R:** Because I was thinking about playing basketball in college but we wanted to go to film school but my dad was strongly opposed to that—

 **L:** Right. There was a lot going on. And I’ll never forget, the day we decided to go to NC State together... oh man, I felt such _relief._ Like I didn’t have to worry about anything anymore because you were going to be there.

 **R:** (chuckles) Oh. That’s nice.

 **L:** Yeah, and at that moment, I decided, well, I decided that I’d follow you anywhere.

 **R:** (laughs)

 **L:** You laugh about that now, man, but I was serious. I didn’t think, “Oh, I’m in love with Rhett,” or anything earth-shattering like that. I don’t think the same way you do. For me, love and loyalty have always been intertwined. So when I made the conscious decision to stay loyal to you—because I’d already been loyal, I just hadn’t thought about it before then—that was equal to you deciding that you loved me.

 **R:** I love you too, Link.

 **L:** Me too.

 **R:** See, you still can’t say it.

 **L:** Look man, I don’t usually tell anyone that I love them, unless they’re my wife or my kids or my mom. Or my grandparents.

 **R:** You told me you loved me like a brother once.

 **L:** Yeah. And that’s still true. I love you in all the ways. I just don’t say it enough, I guess. And I’m sorry.

 **R:** Mmhm.

 **L:** Okay, next question. When did you think that you were going to tell me how you felt?

 **R:** College, I think. When we were sharing a room, wrestling on the floor...

 **L:** Oh gosh, don’t remind me.

 **R:** (smiles) Don’t remind you of what? We were right up against each other there, buddy, you know what you felt.

 **L:** Gosh, man!

 **R:** This is Ear Biscuits, Link. This is a safe space. We can be honest here.

 **L:** (sighs) Okay Rhett. Yes, I felt your penis when you pinned me on the floor in your underwear.

 **R:** I felt yours, too.

 **L:** _Gosh_...

 **R:** And I saw it.

 **L:** I saw yours, too!

 **R:** (laughs) Is this a contest now? We have to count the number of times we’ve seen and felt each other’s penises.

 **L:** (laughs) N-no.

 **R:** Yours is longer.

 **L:** We’ve established this.

 **R:** But mine is bigger.

 **L:** Girthier.

 **R:** Yeah.

 **L:** (laughs) Anyway... how’d we get on this penis talk? We were talking about... confessions. When you thought you’d confess that you loved me.

 **R:** That was it, man. Wrestling on the floor in college. Doin’ the “I’m dead” move. I wanted to tell you then, but I was scared.

 **L:** Why?

 **R:** Well... you know why. Gay marriage wasn’t even legal in the US back then. We couldn’t have gotten married if we’d wanted to. I don’t think I even thought about _marrying_ you at the time, I just knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.

 **L:** Yeah.

 **R:** So I finally decided to bury those feelings. Around the time you and Christy started dating. It was either bury ‘em or get jealous of you two. Then I met Jessie and fell in love with her and when we got married, I was kinda relieved.

 **L:** Relieved. Why?

 **R:** I thought that if I got married, I’d finally be able to forget about you.

 **L:** Oh. Wow.

 **R:** And before anyone comments—because I know at least someone wants to know if I married Jessie because I felt obligated to— _no._ I married her because I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and that’s still true today. The fact of the matter is just that I wanted to love both her _and_ Link, but at the time, I didn’t think it was possible.

 **L:** Yeah, and I definitely felt the same way. I went through some of the same things that you’re describing. Maybe didn’t think about them as much because I’m usually more occupied with all of the day-to-day _stuff_ that I have to do, but I distinctly remember deciding to propose to Christy and then wondering if you were going to be okay with it.

 **R:** (scoffs) What, did you think I was gonna jump off a bridge or something?

 **L:** No, nothing like that. I think subconsciously I was starting to catch on to your feelings, but I never really sat down and thought about it. I just remember thinking that me marrying Christy might make you sad.

 **R:** Your wedding day was bittersweet for me.

 **L:** Same with yours. I was jealous. Felt like... (sighs) Felt like Jessie got to go with you somewhere that I couldn’t follow.

 **R:** But were you ever going to tell me that? Did you ever think you were going to confess your feelings to me?

 **L:** Uh-uh. Never.

 **R:** Really?

 **L:** _Never._ I compartmentalized and _whoop!_ put all those thoughts aside in a little box and buried it deep in the back of my brain.

 **R:** Wow. That’s interesting. What do you think you would have done if I’d said, “I love you” back then?

 **L:** Probably just laughed at you. And called you stupid. It’s probably a good thing that you never told me then. Not the ideal time.

 **R:** Apparently not. There wasn’t really any ideal time to tell you, as I think about it.

 **L:** No, there wasn’t.

 **R:** Didn’t help that you and I started working together more closely after college, with all the stuff we were doing on top of our engineering jobs.

 **L:** And then we had Lily.

 **R:** Yeah, and I don’t want anyone to take this the wrong way, because I love your family as much as I love mine, but at the time, her birth was the nail in the coffin for me.

 **L:** What were you thinkin’?

 **R:** “Oh, Link’s a _dad_ now. I better not let him know how I feel because that would _really_ mess things up.”

 **L:** Ouch.

 **R:** Yeah.

 **L:** So you compartmentalized. Just like I did.

 **R:** Tried to. It was hard. When I’m really interested in something or someone, it’s almost impossible for me to set that aside.

 **L:** But you tried.

 **R:** I tried! Concentrated on work and on my own family, but then Locke was born and I got laid off and we got that gig with Online Nation, and suddenly we were working together every day.

 **L:** Must’ve been hard.

 **R:** Heh, no kidding. I still can’t believe you were completely oblivious to the way I felt back then.

 **L:** Oh, I wasn’t oblivious. I think I was consciously keeping my feelings at a subconscious level, if that makes any sense. Compartmentalizing only worked for so long, then the emotions started coming back. But anytime I thought you were acting strange, I told myself that you were just doing it to be funny and I was imagining things. Perception can really mess with you.

 **R:** I know. Like I said earlier. Sexual tension. A _lot_ of it.

 **L:** A lot of it’s been caught on camera.

 **R:** Yes...

 **L:** Some of it was for show, some of it was unintentional.

 **R:** Oh, all of the tension on my end was intentional.

 **L:** Okay. Well... on my end it wasn’t.

 **R:** There was sexual tension off-camera, too.

 **L:** Yeah, but the mythical beasts didn’t see any of that.

 **R:** What do you think they’d think if they’d seen me helping you crack your back?

 **L:** They did see that. [Jason took a picture](https://www.instagram.com/p/fOFKGuHhlD/) and put it on Instagram or Twitter or somewhere, I think.

 **R:** Did he?

 **L:** Yeah, man! You forgot all about it.

 **R:** Oh. Whoops.

 **L:** But let’s not go into that now. Anyone wants to see what we’re talking about, just go watch a GMM episode. Or those vlogs we used to do years ago. It was all over the place.

 **R:** Yeah.

 **L:** But let's get back on track here. I want us to talk about the moment.

 **R:** The moment?

 **L:** The moment where we both came clean. It was last year. After the screening of Buddy System, season 2.

 **R:** Like, _right afterwards_.

 **L:** This probably isn’t the romantic story you guys are looking for, but here’s how it happened. Rhett and I came onstage after the last episode and everyone’s clapping and stuff. And he—you moved the mic away from your face and you looked at me and you just said—

 **R:** “I love you, Link.”

 **L:** Right, and I just looked at you.

 **R:** You had that smile you get on your face when you don’t know what’s going on.

 **L:** I looked at you and I just said, “Me too.”

 **R:** And that was it.

 **L:** Yep. But we got dramatic about it later.

 **R:** Oh gosh, we took a day off work and went camping in the desert and we talked for a _long_ time.

 **L:** There was a lot to unpack. Years and years of feelings we’d never talked about before. And you cried.

 **R:** You cried too, man! Don’t make this seem like I was the only weepy one.

 **L:** Fine, we both cried and hugged and... did other things. Like I said. Dramatic.

 **R:** Then we had to go home and talk to our wives.

 **L:** Ooh yeah.

 **R:** We talked to them together, while the kids were away. Because if there was going to be an argument, we needed to resolve it before getting them all involved.

 **L:** How do you think Jessie and Christy took it?

 **R:** Better than I expected, to be honest. They weren’t overjoyed, per se, but they weren’t furious with us either.

 **L:** Christy said she actually saw it coming. Ever since we started working together.

 **R:** And since then, other things have come up. The relationship between our wives has begun to mirror ours in a way. And it’s been _great_.

 **L:** (smiles) Oh _yeah_...

 **R:** (laughs)

 **L:** But let’s move on from that. What have our kids thought?

 **R:** We’ve explained the basics to them. That we loved our wives and also each other. Not much has changed with them. But—and I forgot to tell you this—Shepherd asked me if we were all going to move into one big house together.

 **L:** (laughs) He did?

 **R:** Yeah! I told him that’s never going to happen.

 **L:** Never.

 **R:** We’d probably kill each other if we were living together.

 **L:** And plus, one or both of us would have to put our current houses back on the market. And that ain’t gonna be me.

 **R:** Or me.

 **L:** So we just try to spend more time together outside of work. Meaningful time.

 **R:** And speaking of work, I wanted to talk about how this relationship change has affected our work, because it definitely does.

 **L:** You think so? I don’t think it does much.

 **R:** I can kiss you if I want.

 **L:** No, you can’t. We’ve had to make rules. Okay, maybe that’s one thing that’s changed. We have a rule that there’s no PDA allowed at work.

 **R:** Except for now. If you’re listening to this Ear Biscuit, I need to tell you that we’ve been holding hands this whole time.

 **L:** No, we haven’t.

 **R:** (whispers) They don’t know that.

 **L:** Our loyal viewers of the video version will know.

 **R:** Tch, nobody watches an Ear Biscuit all the way through. They just put it on in the background while they do other stuff.

 **L:** Well, for the sake of those four people you said needed to hear this episode, we are not holding hands. Any advice we want to give to those four people?

 **R:** Oh gosh. Count the cost. Think long and hard about it. Talk to your spouse and your best friend if you think it’s worth the trouble. It won’t be a fun conversation, but it’s one that you’ll need to have. Don’t just blurt out to your best friend that you love them.

 **L:** Yeah, we glossed over some details, but it took us _months_ before we were comfortable with the new dynamic of our relationship. There were a lot of tears and late-night talks and a few fights too, if I’m being completely honest.

 **R:** But we worked through it and here we are now. Holding hands.

 **L:** We’re not holding hands.

 **R:** (strains) Okay, now we are.

 **L:** (sighs) Yeah. Now we are, Rhett. _Gosh,_ your hand is sweaty. Maybe you should get that checked out.

 **R:** (laughs) I love you too, Link.


End file.
